How to Make Out in Graduate School: One Observer's View

Abstract

The establishment of new graduate sociology programs and the rapid expansion of such programs in general have created a deficit of peer socialization as to the latent, unwritten "requirements" of successfully attaining the Ph.D. The present paper seeks partially to correct this deficit through explicating a number of existing but unwritten requirements ofsuccess in graduate sociology. The explication focuses upon six informal aspects of the graduate experience that affect student success and it makes recommendations on how to manage each aspect: 1) being conscious that one should earty decide his personal "data style" and substantive interests; 2) performing early a sizing up of the faculty in terms of their congruence with one and in terms of their national repute, as well as developing relations with congruent facul!}; 3) knowing the factors professors employ in sizing up students; 4) realiiing that accomplished papers are the key to graduate success, and knowing how to manage one's papers; 5) recognizing the relative unimportance of formal examinations; and 6) knowing how to chose and manage one's doctoral thesis topic and committee.